The Annotated We: A New Translation of Evgeny Zamiatin’s Novel

by Vladimir Wozniuk

The AnnotatedWe represents the first fully annotated translation of Evgeny Zamiatin’s classic novel in English. Generally recognized as the first modern anti-utopian novel, Zamiatin’s We has puzzled scholars and critics alike, for it is both serious and playful, full of games. Long considered to be enigmatic, it stands out as unique among his works, and its importance is beyond doubt, for it not only holds the distinction of being the first work of its kind, but is also widely believed to have provided thematic elements for the two most famous dystopian works of the twentieth century, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
This new English translation employs language and syntax that mirror the precision and economy of Zamiatin’s Russian in his “poem in prose.” The commentary that accompanies the text sheds light on Zamiatin’s use of language as well as on the broad array of allusions that mark it, while at the same time suggesting many previously unacknowledged sources for the novel’s playfulness.

Genres: Literature

217 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 12, 2015

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zamiatin wrote this book 100 years ago, in 1924. Its publication history, and the persecution of the author by the Soviet government, is itself disturbing and prophetic. The prose/poem quietly made its way around literary circles, and influenced Orwell and Huxley.

It is the journal, in 40 "Reports," of D-503, a Number in the United State. The subjects live in a glass panopticon: sex, humor, food, clothing are all carefully regulated in accord with the highest precepts of reason and mathematics. To be free - to love - is to be unreasonable.

Zamiatin's prose is extraordinary, mysterious, and expressionistic. His psychology of color is mind-blowing. "But now I know - and you, too, know - that laughter may be of different colors."

I'm struck by the way Zamiatin's novel resonates with Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground" and Grand Inquisitor.

D-503 asks, "Who are those We? Who am I?" The answer seems to be "We is from God; I is from the devil."

"The celebration of the Day of Unanimity, long awaited by all, took place yesterday. The same Well-Doer who so often has proved his unshakeable wisdom was unanimously re-elected for the forty-eighth time. The celebration was clouded by a little confusion, created by the enemies of happiness, who by their action naturally lost the right to be the bricks of the foundation of the renovated United State. It is clear to everyone that to take their votes into account would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent, heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in the concert hall."

I read the 1952 edition.